


An Order - From Your Commander

by Face_of_Poe



Series: Seize the Moment (and stay in it) [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Military, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous Relationships, Grief, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Substance Abuse, irreverent mental health humor, past canonical character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 04:40:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16803817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Face_of_Poe/pseuds/Face_of_Poe
Summary: Department of the ArmyField Manual 6-0Commander and Staff Organization and Operations(approved for public release)Introduction- Mission command is both a philosophy and a warfighting function.As the Army’s philosophy of command, mission command emphasizes that command is essentially a human endeavor.





	An Order - From Your Commander

**Author's Note:**

> Tags, tags, tags. Please heed the tags. Please let me know if I missed any, this one was a bit of a beast to tag-wrangle.  
> (Also I am not kidding about the irreverent mental health humor tag, Hamilton is an absolute little shit)
> 
> I would much recommend reading fic 1 in the series before tackling this monster.

“ _Captain Washington_.”

It’s the tone, more than the voice, the accent. An assuredness that belies the utterly bizarre circumstances that have so suddenly transpired the moment he picked up the ringing phone on his desk.

And the first time, to his recollection, that the person on the other end of the line has called him by the proper rank.

He straightens in his seat; alert, on edge, because this is one break from routine that can only have a troubling outcome. From the corner of his eye, he can see Sullivan glance his way, curious or concerned, and the voice in his ear continues.

“ _Forgive the abruptness of the call. We met, you and I, perhaps a year and a half ago…_ ”

“Mister Lafayette.”

There’s a brief pause, and then – “ _Ah. You remember_.”

As though he could _forget_.

Washington licks his suddenly-dry lips and pulls in a forcedly even breath. “What’s happened?”

“ _I’m sorry_ ,” Lafayette gets out in a rush. “ _But I… knew of no one else to call_.”

x---x

**I.** _Information alone rarely provides an adequate basis for deciding and acting. Effective mission command requires further developing information into knowledge so commanders can achieve understanding._

For all his good intentions, Lafayette does not know this world. The policies and protocols. Cannot read between the lines of the confused and confusing tale he’d spun with thinly-veiled desperation which reminds Washington that his attachment to Alexander Hamilton is deep and sincere; no matter how privately skeptical he found himself regarding the healthiness of the _manifestation_ of that attachment.

A line he’d tripped over, himself; he is in no position to pass judgement.

Lafayette cannot read between the lines of his own tale, but Washington can, and he finds himself musing with increasing disquiet as he’s stuck in traffic during the (nominally) thirty-minute drive from campus to the sprawling hospital complex just north of the city.

He’d started to tap out a querying email to Knox upon hanging up the phone before his better sense took hold. Knox wouldn’t tell him anything – _couldn’t_ tell him anything – and it was best not to leave him open to accusations of disclosing sensitive information when Washington went to investigate anyway.

And so he left his afternoon MS-3 class in Sullivan’s capable hands, made his excuses to Colonel Montgomery, hopped in his car, and started driving.

And, the beltway being the beltway, here he sits in traffic, alone with his thoughts and suspicions and his creeping disquiet, and wonders where the mistake he’s about to make will measure up in orders of magnitude to the mistakes he made last year.

He wonders that it doesn’t particularly occur to him to simply _not_ make the mistake. No obligation to Lafayette, certainly – he hardly knows the man. Knows him as Hamilton’s intimate friend. A charismatic man, free with his flirtatious charm. Observant enough to catch the burgeoning _want_ or something darker in Washington’s gaze and, if he inferred properly from Hamilton’s words on their last encounter, privy to the knowledge of their indiscretions some months afterwards.

Whatever tone Hamilton’s reflections had taken with his friend, they were clearly not enough to dissuade him from reaching out in this moment of uncertainty, hamstrung by the ocean separating them and obligations at home. A relief in some ways; decidedly not in others, and he wonders what it means that Hamilton does not have words even for his closest confidante to mirror the guilty regret that threatens to surface whenever Washington is reminded of his onetime executive officer.

x---x

It helps that he’s in uniform; so he imagines, anyway. Gives him more confidence when he presses the _7_ in the elevator instead of the _5_ and walks through a set of double doors labeled _Inpatient Psychiatry Services_ and approaches a reception desk and inquires about visiting a patient he doesn’t know with total certainty is even _here_.

The young specialist at the desk doesn’t pull anything up in the computer, just flips through a clipboard and asks, “Are you expected, sir?”

“No. Apologies, should I have called ahead?”

“No, that’s alright, sir.” He slides a visitors sheet across the counter. “If you could just…?” And he grabs a sticky note and quickly scribbles _CPT Washington_ on it, glancing at his name tape as he spells it out. “If you’ll excuse me a minute…”

“Certainly.”

He finishes signing in on the guest log and takes up one of the faux-leather armchairs in the offset, otherwise empty waiting area. The specialist waves an id badge in front of a sensor by the door beside the desk and slips through when it unlocks with a _click_ , leaving Washington alone with his thoughts and the muted cable news station on the TV in the little alcove.

It’s a cozy enough space. Dark woods and gray walls, with a rectangular cutout in the wall on the far end of the space that holds an aquarium-like fixture. Except, instead of fish, it’s just rows of hypnotic bubbles dancing up the wall, gentle illumination shifting colors slowly as he watches. Just underneath, a children’s play table set against the wall.

_A minute_ turns closer to five, he estimates, but the specialist returns eventually and just in time to pick up a ringing phone at the desk. Once that is handled, he calls over, “Captain Washington?” By the time he reaches the desk, there’s an empty basket on the counter, a piece of masking tape stuck to the side with a scrawled _CPT Washington_ on it. “Phone and keys please, sir.”

“Very well.”

There’s a small locker in a cabinet behind the desk that opens with a swipe of the same keycard that opened the door. After a brief spiel of rules and assurances that he does not come bearing any number of understandably prohibited items and a swipe of Washington’s id card to log him in the system, the basket is secured and the specialist is leading him back into the closed unit.

He has only a brief glance of similarly muted colors adorning the walls and floor, dimmer lighting than he’s ever seen in a medical facility before, before he’s being waved through a door-less threshold labeled _Visitor’s Lounge._

Another set of squishy armchairs; another television mounted on the wall. A window here overlooking a narrow courtyard down below, drawn curtains across the way. A shelf with books and board games, decks of cards.

“He should be along soon,” his escort tells him by way of farewell, and then slips away back to his station.

And so Washington waits some more; is very _good_ at waiting, has spent his adult life doing more waiting than not at the behest of Uncle Sam, but it gives his mind still more time to wander and wonder and, worst of all, _reflect_.

Fortunately for him, there’s enough distraction after the first minute or two. Clipped footsteps up and down a connecting passage, chattering voices and a rumbling laugh. He sees a flash of white coat pass by the lounge and hears the click of the outer door unlatching, and then sees white coat flash by again not thirty seconds later heading back the same way.

He doesn’t hear the footsteps that signal the arrival of his former XO, and so he blinks for several seconds, taken aback, when he appears in the doorway red-faced and sweaty, with a purple water bottle with a pop-cap and the letters _WRNMMC_ stamped on it in one hand. The other hand – his dominant hand – is weighed down by a red wrist cast that wraps around the juncture of his thumb and forefinger and extends well up towards his elbow.

There’s something a little challenging in the stare he fixes on Washington as he sucks down what must be half the bottle, and he does not move from the doorway.

_Challenge_ , he can work with. He looks over Hamilton’s sweat-matted hair, down his black PT vestments until he gets to his stocking feet, and asks, “You just make a break for it?”

Hamilton blinks at him once, twice, and then bursts out laughing and steps into the room. He waves off Washington’s move to rise and collapses two chairs away. A need for space or a courtesy due to his sweaty form, Washington couldn’t say.

“Well, that took Laf precisely _no_ time flat,” Hamilton grouses after sucking the water bottle dry and tossing it onto the seat between them. “Jesus. How’d he get hold of you that fast?”

“He called the office,” Washington shrugs. “We manage to keep our cadre listings somewhat up to date on the university webpage.”

“How _is_ ROTC treating you?”

_A damn sight better than Korea is treating you, it seems_.

“Good,” he assures him. “Relaxing, mostly. Good group of cadets.”

“So, better than Basic.”

“You have no idea.” Hamilton smiles faintly down at the floor; wiggles his toes absently and idly taps his thumb against the cast. “What happened to your flipper there?”

Hamilton huffs. Stops tapping and holds the thing up, twists his arm around to look at it. “Nothing even remotely interesting. The sadists in charge at Camp Casey like to set up battalion _fun runs_ in the mountains and shit. Slipped on some rocks and my run became quickly _less_ fun.” He looks up and Washington diverts his attention from the cast back up to Hamilton’s face and sees a self-deprecating smile that quickly morphs back into some of the challenge. “Are you going to ask?”

“Ask what?” He looks like he’s biting back a number of angry and frustrated retorts, and Washington can’t help but chuckle at the grumpy pout settling over his young companion’s face. “Alexander, if you wanted to discuss what brought you here, you wouldn’t have given your closest friend the runaround on the precise circumstances of your stay.”

“I can’t tell if I should be flattered or insulted that you pieced that together with no apparent difficulty.”

“Don’t be so maudlin, he said you mentioned being uncertain when you’d next be able to get in touch. Far as I know, they don’t confiscate phones downstairs.”

“…touché.”

There’s more he could say on the topic of his inferences and deductions.

He doesn’t.

He does, however, warn the prickly young captain, “He booked a flight for this weekend.”

Hamilton groans and wipes his good hand down his face. “Fuck’s sake, I told him not to bother.” He shoots Washington a sidelong glance and asks drily, “He mention if he was bringing his fiancée?”

_Oh._ “I can’t say that it came up one way or another.” Hamilton tips his head back and closes his eyes, and he’d look like he were falling asleep were it not for the unnerving stillness with which he held himself. “He remembered I was local, I said I’d check in. I’ll tell him whatever you like, or I’ll tell him nothing at all.” Silence. “Should I go?”

“Got somewhere to be?”

He shrugs, though Hamilton can’t see it. “Nah. Handed off my three o’clock class.” Traffic being what it is, he’d miss it even if he _did_ head back now.

Hamilton leans his head sideways and blinks over at him slowly. “Twenty-four hours ago, I got off a fourteen-hour flight across a fourteen-hour time difference. I am jetlagged all to hell, my sleep is for shit, and there’s no caffeine allowed past that damn door,” he nods vaguely in the direction of the reception area.

“I can g-”

“ _But_.” Hamilton fixes him with a steady stare. “I have a bedtime. I am wearing Army-issue slipper socks – after surrendering my sneakers at the door of the gym, no less – and a special pair of PT shorts with no drawstring. I have an honest-to-God _lights-out_ time like I’m six years old. I’m gross and I need a shower, which,” he waves his casted arm, “you can imagine is something of a production. But if you stick around, they’ll let me skip out on therapeutic yoga and, do you have _any idea_ how goddamn boring yoga is, modified for standing poses only?”

A roundabout way of asking him to stay, but he’ll take it. “I’ll be entirely honest,” he muses slowly, “I wasn’t aware there were modifications that could succeed in making yoga _more_ boring, but you have my sympathies.”

Which earns him another quick bark of honest laughter, and he won’t deny he’s glad to see the flash of familiar mischief in Hamilton’s eyes, however brief. “I think I’ve missed you, George.”

“I think I’m honored.”

Hamilton snatches up the discarded water bottle and rises. “I’ll be back.” But he pauses at the threshold and turns and says carefully, “I… my Jack to Cheerios ratio maybe got a bit skewed.”

Washington blinks at him. “Come again?”

A different sort of pink tinges his cheeks now that the exertion has long worn off. “You asked if I poured Jack into my box of Cheerios.”

_Oh_. The reference to _that_ night, however skirting, threatened to raise a flush to match Hamilton’s.

_Cornflakes_ , he wants to correct. _The joke was about Cornflakes_.

He doesn’t.

But he observes Hamilton more carefully now while he fidgets in the doorway. Removed from the shock of his initial, sudden appearance, the baggy PTs and the cast, the stocking feet, and he can see the toll fourteen months and the time in Korea have taken. A weariness about him that seems deeper than the exhaustion of travel and jetlag. Enough weight lost to show in his face, the jut of his collarbones.

What he doesn’t say: _If the Army started cracking down on alcohol consumption, half the service would be chaptered out_.

What he does say: “I see.”

Hamilton flushes a deeper red and nods stiltedly before turning on his heel and heading deeper into the ward.

x---x

“Everything,” Hamilton tells him an hour later as they stand side-by-side and regard the shelf full of recreational activities, “in this place is very carefully selected and approved to maintain the least offensive environment possible.”

They’re still alone; an older couple had briefly joined Washington in the lounge during Hamilton’s absence, but were quickly led off again by a doctor for family therapy with who Washington gathered to be their daughter.

Hamilton gestures at the stack of board games. “Can’t have _Risk_ , because it’s all about war. Can’t have _Clue_ , because it’s all about murder. Can’t have _Life_ , because, well – yeah.” He points at a couple of children’s games at the bottom of the stack and glances at him, grinning. “Can’t have _Twister_ because, let’s face it, not everyone coming through here has the requisite hardware.”

“Present company somewhat included,” Washington observes with yet another glance at the cast adorning Hamilton’s right wrist. “Please tell me that the fire engine red was random and not a redleg joke.”

“It was absolutely a redleg joke.” He makes an executive decision and wriggles the _Scrabble_ board free with his left hand, and then props it on top of the cast and carries it over to a table under the TV. The table gets dragged, one-handed, to the middle of the room, and then he sets about rearranging chairs.

There’s a single-minded intensity to his efforts that tells Washington it’s best not to offer his assistance, even when he struggles to get the leverage to wriggle the top of the box free.

“There is a bigger common area around the corner,” Hamilton offers a bit belatedly, already settling himself in to a seat. “It comes with the downside of, well… people.”

Washington waves him off and shrugs as he lowers himself into the other chair. “Did you pick _Scrabble_ so you could kick my ass?”

“Yu _p_.” He passes over a tile stand and sets up one for himself, and then reaches for the pad of score sheets before sighing noisily and tossing it across the table.

A little pencil follows soon thereafter. Washington rips the top sheet off and designates the first column _A_ and the second one _G_. He watches Hamilton dig out a fistful of letter tiles, rack the first seven of them, and shove the rest back in the bag.

He counts out his own and tries to imagine his relentlessly _non-stop_ XO trying to juggle work with his dominant hand minimally functional or, worse yet, forced to hand off some of that work and never mind the PT profile, especially with the new testing standards. “How long ‘til the cast comes off?”

“Are you sleuthing, George?” Hamilton asks mildly as he lays down a word to start them off. Doesn’t wait for a response before answering, “Week or two.”

Washington looks at the four letters on the board – _LOON_ – and raises a cool brow in Hamilton’s direction.

Gets a shit-eating grin in return.

Forty-five minutes later, Hamilton has added _HEAD_ and _TRAPPED_ to his count of thematic words. Twice, he’s stolen Washington’s rack and played him out of a jam, only to curse at the points won and demand half of them for his efforts.

He’s also insisted that _XI_ is a word and no, he doesn’t know what it means but it’s in the _Scrabble Dictionary_ and Washington’ll just have to take his word for it as they are lacking said dictionary and have no other ability to research at present.

A tech passes through for a check-in – civilian, he thinks. She peers at the score sheet and shakes her head in exasperation and tells Hamilton, “You’re incorrigible.”

He executes a half-sitting mock-bow with a twirl of his casted arm. “Thank you, Maggie.”

“You’ve got Doctor Hosack in twenty,” she reminds him.

“Right,” he says down to the board, pink rising in his cheeks again. “Let me finish kicking my former CO’s ass here, ‘kay?”

“My condolences, sir,” Maggie offers across the table before moving on to finish her rounds. 

They play out a few more rounds, sifting through the dregs of the remaining tiles, but Hamilton’s mood has shifted. Quiet; sullen, or maybe just distracted and caught up in his own thoughts, until he finally shoves his tile rack aside and leans back in the chair with a sigh.

“You can tell Laf,” he says slowly, with an air of choosing his words very carefully, “that I’m on a two-week medical TDY. You can tell him – shit, when does he get in?”

“Late Saturday; after visiting hours, I imagine.”

Hamilton lets out a weary sigh. “Alright – you can tell him – _fuck_.” He runs his good hand through his hair and tips his head back, stares up at the ceiling. “You can tell him that I’m in for a seventy-two-hour evaluation. Technically voluntarily, though,” he mumbles mostly to himself, “I’d argue it was under a bit of duress. _Coercion_ at the very least.”

“Alright.”

“My three days is up midday Saturday, but the Army generally isn’t very good at making things go on the weekend, so I suspect I won’t be able to fly the coop until Monday morning unless they really need the bed.” Washington isn’t altogether certain what to make of his apparent confidence that a longer stay inpatient won’t be recommended; it must show on his face because Hamilton takes one look at him and says, “Fuck off.”

“Sorry. Just processing.”

“Well,” he starts packing up the game one-handed, “process back to Virginia, I have an appointment.”

Washington moves his own chair back against the wall this time, and then shoves the table under the TV when Hamilton takes the game box to the shelf. “Can I come back tomorrow?”

There’s no immediate reply. When he turns back around, Hamilton is watching him and shaking his head, a bit bemused, and chewing on his lower lip. “You’re not subtle.” But before he can even remotely begin to parse through what _that_ means, he asks, “Don’t you have to work?”

“We’re just in the office on Fridays, no classes.”

“Why does _in the office_ sound like a euphemism for sitting around and twiddling your thumbs?”

“I do have to draw up a semester final by Monday, if it’s any consolation.”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Hamilton mutters. “Yeah, okay. Sure, if you… sure.”

“Same time?”

“Sure. I’ll put you on the list. I’ll help you write your test.”

Washington cocks a brow and points out, “I’d like some of my students to actually pass it, if it’s all the same.”

Which earns him another quick grin, another flash of that old mischief, before Hamilton is slipping out the door and calling over his shoulder, “Lemme find someone to let you out.”

And with that jarringly off-handed reminder that they’re locked in, that Washington is the only one of them allowed past the threshold of the unit, Hamilton is gone and Washington is left to _process_ , all the way back to Virginia.

x---x

Lafayette receives the email with Washington’s cell number and calls him at what he estimates to be nearly one in the morning in Paris.

He takes the information Hamilton told him to relay with a subdued acceptance that suggests to Washington that he isn’t entirely surprised.

He isn’t altogether certain what to make of that.

x---x

**II.** _Success in operations demands timely and effective decisions based on applying judgment to available information and knowledge. Throughout the conduct of operations, commanders seek to build and maintain situational understanding._

The wait isn’t so long the next day; a different tech, who introduces himself as Robert, collects him from the reception area and leads him past the lounge where he’d stayed for the duration the day before. An intersecting hallway ends in the larger, open common space Hamilton had mentioned, and he can hear low murmured conversations from the scant handful of people he can see, but Robert leads him straight and knocks on the third of a series of clustered doors on their right.

He has a brief glimpse of Hamilton’s shower-damp hair and a cheerful grin before he’s yanking up his sweatshirt sleeve and shoving his cast in Washington’s face and demanding, “Do you like my trust exercise?”

“Jesus.”

Robert snorts softly under his breath and taps at the door while shooting a warning look at Hamilton, whose smile turns positively Cheshire until Robert relents and heads back down the hallway.

“I can have my friends over to play,” Hamilton explains as he flops down on the passably-made bed in the middle of the small room, “but we have to leave the door open or who knows what sort of hanky-panky we might get up to.” He rolls over onto his stomach and peers guilelessly up at Washington. “I suppose we know _precisely_ what sort, actually.”

“If you’re quite done.” The grin widens once more but then falls away almost as quickly as he glances around the room looking restless and bored. “Well, let’s see your _trust exercise_.”

“ _Oh_.” He rolls back over and sits up and thrusts out his arm. “My neighbor’s an artist. They let her have a set of those felt calligraphy markers.”

“You get out of more therapeutic recreation?”

He shrugs. “Nah. Free time after dinner.”

The whole cast is covered in random swirling patterns in blue, green, and black marker, with a looping signature that reads _Annie_ where it extends across the lower part of his palm. “That’s lovely.”

“Would you like to know what she usually draws?”

Washington stares at him a moment, brow furrowing, feeling like it’s something of a trick question. “I don’t know… would I?”

“Probably not,” Hamilton concedes.

He falls back over onto his back and Washington takes the opportunity to glance around the space. There’s a window on the wall opposite the door – overlooking the same inner courtyard as the lounge, he’d hazard, but the curtains are drawn, royal blue to match the quilted comforter Hamilton is sprawled across.

A desk under the window has a notebook on it, stamped with the same _WRNMMC_ as the purple water bottle sitting in the corner nearest a second door that must be a bathroom. There’s a pencil with it, but he somehow doubts that Hamilton is journaling his thoughts and feelings and not least because of the chore that must be writing at all.

On the wall opposite the foot of the bed is a wardrobe of the same deep-stained wood to match the desk; next to that is one of the maroon chairs that folds out to a makeshift cot that he’s seen in each and every patient room in a military medical facility he’s ever had occasion to visit, though he cannot imagine many of the patients are allowed overnight guests.

“Watercolors,” Hamilton offers lazily from the bed, eyes closed and holding himself with that same unnatural stillness.

“Hm?”

“That’s this afternoon’s group therapeutic recreation. Watercolors.”

“Will you be in attendance?”

Hamilton just takes a couple of slow breaths. His brows pull in, like he’s trying to work something out, and eventually he sighs and opens his eyes and asks, “How long until I have to stop calling you _George_?” He shakes his head, confused. “Two commands under your belt and you still weren’t up this year?”

_Oh_. “My effective date’s not until April.”

“ _Major_ Washington,” Hamilton rolls across his tongue. “Meh.” The corner of his mouth quirks up at Washington’s dry look as he lowers himself into the desk chair. “Leavenworth?”

“Probably PCS mid-June.”

“Huh.”

Hamilton’s eyes drift closed again. Washington wonders if this is jetlag, or sleeplessness, or simple ennui, and just when he shifts, debating between offering to leave him to rest or offering to go in search of some simple recreation like yesterday’s game, Hamilton asks slowly, pointedly, “Are you going to tell me just what egregious wrong you think you committed against me?”

_You’re not subtle_.

“Alexander…”

“No, I’m serious.” He levers himself up to sitting with his left arm. “I was promoted; I was gone from the unit; I was evaluated. You were in the clear when we met in the damn cereal aisle at the commissary.”

_This_ , he suspects, is not quite the conversational material those in charge of the unit strive for. “Do you honestly think this is the time?”

A wicked gleam comes to Hamilton’s eye, and he makes an offer that Washington can’t help but find shamefully tantalizing: “Answer me, and I’ll answer any question you want about what happened in Korea.”

An offer, it turns out, he can’t bring himself to refuse.

He fights for the right words to convey the substance, the weight of this guilt he’s carried for some fifteen months. “My preoccupation with… professional propriety, liability… left me with something of a blind spot in regards to our… particular personal relationship.”

It makes about as little sense, repeating the words back in his own mind, as it apparently made to Hamilton, judging by the look on his face. “You think we had too _personal_ a relationship when we f… hooked up?” The stumble raises a flush in Hamilton’s cheeks. “ _Hooked up_ ,” he repeats back to himself. “Jesus, I sound like I’m back in college.”

Washington has never had a word, a phrase, a reference for just what, precisely, that night _was_ ; some part of him is reassured that Hamilton suffers the same uncertainty. Even if it only serves to vindicate his guilt.

“What I _think_ ,” he tells him quietly, head bowed and eyes down on the floor, “is that regardless of the promotion, regardless of the fact that you’d moved on… you’d not yet separated _our_ relationship from commander and subordinate.”

“Are you kidding me right now?” Hamilton demands doggedly. “Why, because I answered your questions and stripped down and called you _sir_?” Anger sparks in Hamilton’s eyes, and something deeper with it. Defiance, defensiveness. “Wasn’t that the point? Wasn’t that the _game_?”

He doesn’t know how to answer that.

Even still.

“What?” Hamilton cuts into the silence. “You think I’m lying? _George_?”

“No, Alexander,” he answers softly. “I think you’ve probably convinced yourself since then that that’s all it was.”

The ire bleeds out of Hamilton’s expression and for a moment, a fleeting instant, he looks shocked, like Washington landed a blow he never even saw coming.

He wants the words back.

He wants them back even before Hamilton’s face shutters, before he yanks the sleeve of his sweatshirt down over his intricately-decorated cast and wraps his arms as best he can around his thin frame and orders quietly, “Get out.”

“I’m sor-”

“Just…” He won’t even meet Washington’s eyes; twists his face around, and Washington follows his gaze towards the call button on the wall by the head of the bed. “Go away.”

He goes.

x---x

He doesn’t go far.

He waves off the move to retrieve his basket of belongings at the reception desk and asks instead, “Cafeteria?”

“Full cafeteria’s in the basement, sir. And there’s an express café on the first floor.”

“Thank you, Specialist Lovell.” It occurs just as he’s pushing open the double doors back out to the main floor. “And how late are visiting hours?”

“Twenty-hundred, sir.”

A quick glance at his watch puts that more than six hours away. “On second thought,” he backtracks, “I will take my keys.”

The cafeteria’s not bad. Better than the average d-fac he’s had occasion to frequent, not quite up to par with the campus dining halls at Colonial. He takes his time, refills his coffee twice, and buys a water bottle on his way out to his car to retrieve his class materials.

Lovell nods at him absently when he settles in to the far end of the waiting area, opposite the unoccupied children’s area with the hypnotic lights bubbling up the wall.

He spends a productive chunk of time sketching out his final for the third years. Offensive and defensive leadership concepts, tactical foundations, fitness and health principles…

He gets to the slides about fostering a productive, efficient, and healthy staff organization and command environment, and decides to put those aside for the time being.

The world moves on around him and pays him little mind. The phone rings at the desk in fairly regular intervals and the occasional visitor comes through but none of them join Washington in his semi-seclusion, seem to be on a list and arriving for scheduled visits or family appointments and are quickly ushered back.

Shortly before four, an alarm goes off that starts him out of his concentration. By the time he looks to the desk for some clue as to what’s going on, Lovell is swiping his badge and ducking into the unit.

He resurfaces about a minute later, shortly after the alarm cuts off, looking unfazed. Catches Washington’s perturbed stare and makes a dismissive gesture that Washington interprets as _Nothing to worry about_ , except he then wants to know if that means _nothing to worry about_ in general, or _nothing to worry about_ for him and the particular patient he’s there to see.

Or not see, as the case may be.

Focus shot, he muscles his way through the last slides and jots a few more notes. He’s just contemplating pulling out his computer to start typing the thing up, when a soft set of footsteps pad into the little waiting alcove and he looks up into Maggie’s wryly-smiling face. “You want to come back?”

“Am I invited back?”

She chuckles while he starts packing up his notes and folders. “He stood staring at his easel for about three minutes and then I believe said, quote, _Goddammit, he’s still here, isn’t he?_ ”

“Well, that certainly sounds like the Alexander Hamilton I used to work with.” And then he pauses and realizes, “He’s just using me to get out of painting, isn’t he?”

She laughs harder as she leads him up to the desk and doesn’t answer.

He has to surrender his keys again, along with his bag, and then Maggie takes him and deposits him back in the visitor’s lounge where Hamilton is gnawing on his thumbnail and staring absently at a piece of paper laid out to dry on the table.

“Play nice, Alexander,” Maggie tells him.

“I did the damn painting, okay?”

Washington looks it over while Maggie disappears with a last soft chuckle. “It’s a very lovely painting.”

“Fuck you, don’t make fun of my gimpy tree.” There’s a certain grade school charm to the cartoonish picture that looks more like a log with a green hat than any tree Washington has ever seen.

“What was the commotion about a little while back?”

Hamilton shrugs dully and tosses himself into a chair, where he sits staring up at Washington through heavy-lidded eyes. “Dunno. Someone didn’t want to go to an appointment; Robert took an elbow to the eye.” A brief pause. “ _No_ , it wasn’t me, in case you’re wondering.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Okay then.”

Washington moves slowly towards a chair on the adjacent wall where he can sit somewhat facing Hamilton; gets watched warily the whole way. “How’d you know I stuck around?”

A lazy smile pulls up one side of his mouth. “You’re predictable, George.”

He’s not altogether certain whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, or just a simple statement of fact.

“So when I busted my flipper,” Hamilton starts slowly, intent gaze never leaving Washington’s. “They gave me codeine.” _Oh_. He sits up a little straighter and fights from keeping any surprise or apprehension off his face. “And you know how Army medicine is about the narcotic shit; I think if I’d taken it as often as _allowed_ , I’d have had enough pills to get through a day and a half or something, it wasn’t a lot.”

Haltingly, Washington says, “Alexander, you don’t have to -”

“Shut the fuck up, my deal wasn’t contingent upon _liking_ your answers.”

He waits there, waits for any further objection; Washington keeps his mouth shut.

“So I took a few that day, and spent the day in a foggy haze, and switched to ibuprofen in the morning and tossed the rest in a drawer.” Washington just nods. “But… there’s like one big, neon-red-sign rule about codeine – besides _don’t get fucking hooked on codeine_ – which is _don’t mix with alcohol_.”

_Ah_. “Your Jack-to-Cheerios ratio?”

“Eh, it’s a little more complicated. I mean,” he shoots Washington a dry look, “ _yes_ , I’ve been drinking too much in Korea, but nothing that particularly made me stand out in a crowd until what happened last week.”

He waits, like he’s expecting Washington to ask.

He doesn’t; he’s learned that lesson.

So Hamilton huffs and tells him, “So fast forward a few weeks. Group of us are going into town Friday night. Pre-gaming in the barracks. I… _remember_ that I didn’t feel great at work. I _don’t_ remember when I decided to take something, or _what_ I decided to take, or _how much_ I ended up taking, but long story short I ended up in the hospital on post, semi-lucid and in respiratory distress because when you double up on depressants I guess that can happen.”

“Jesus.”

“So… at the hospital, they’re, you know, pulling up my records. And they know I was drinking, and already drew blood to check on _that_ , and then they see I’d been prescribed codeine a few weeks back, so all their little _substance abuse_ red flags start going off and they run another quick lab and decide to admit me and recommend a psych eval.”

“And _that_ got you sent all the way stateside?”

“Noo, that decision got made after I spent a couple days pissed off and belligerent about being admitted, and having my unit _looking into_ my drinking habits and so on and so forth. And I…” A flash of uncertainty crosses his face and he looks away, chewing on his thumbnail again. “I’m admittedly self-destructive at times, but I’m _not_ suicidal. I’m not. And, you know – individually, I hadn’t had enough alcohol or codeine to be even remotely dangerous. It’s not like I OD’d.”

And Washington understands. “But you can’t tell them if you mixed them on purpose.”

“Hm.” He sits and broods and sucks in a deep breath before throwing up his good hand in a half-hearted shrug. “Anyway. The situation might have been salvageable, but Major Greene suggested that perhaps the time on limited duty was taking a psychological toll. A wrist doesn’t seem like a lot, but we spend a _lot_ of time in the field and I’m not cleared. And then,” he says slowly, “Colonel Knox offered – and I think he did mean it sincerely as a preferable alternative – that I pack up and go home early and spend the rest of the deployment with the rear-d battery back at Sill.”

Washington can only imagine how that went over.

Except he doesn’t have to imagine, when Hamilton elaborates, “I told him, quite colorfully, all the things I would rather do to myself than help organize casserole rotations for all the deployment wives popping out babies. Which,” he allows, “might have gone over smoother had I not just been discharged from a twenty-four-hour psych hold.”

“So why send you all the way here?” Washington asks softly.

“I think the logic was that locking me up for three days down the street from the unit where I couldn’t do my damn job would exacerbate that whole _psychological toll_.”

Much as he skirts a direct acknowledgement, Hamilton quite noticeably does not _deny_ Greene’s assertion.

“And so, I was given a choice,” Hamilton concludes, tone edging towards bitterness. “Go back to Sill. Check in with Behavioral Health. Get yanked out of the command queue and, basically they’d figure out what to do about me when the unit redeploys in February.”

It sounds harsh.

The thing is –

He knows Henry Knox. Knows he takes the welfare of the men and women under his command seriously. That he isn’t prone to histrionics and overreaction. 

“Or take the two weeks here,” Hamilton continues, oblivious to the disquiet worming back into Washington’s brain. “Do the three days. _Presumably_ shift to some outpatient follow-up while I wait for this thing to come off.” He knocks at his sleeved cast. “And let the team here make the call – clear me back to Korea or send me home to Sill.”

He wonders what Knox saw to scare him so.

He wonders what Hamilton’s _not_ saying.

He thinks back to his last Oklahoma conversation with the newly-minted young captain, in which he’d acknowledged having no family, no rooted home to speak of anymore, a dedicated officer who was unable or unwilling to separate his service from his very _self_ and he wonders at the fear Hamilton surely feels, that he’ll be thrust back into a world without the rigid structure, the rules, and left to find his own way and flounder.

He wonders if a broken wrist didn’t start something so much as _unleash_ it.

He wonders what Lafayette knows.

He wonders and he wonders and he _wonders_.

And he cannot ask.

“Get that look off your face,” Hamilton orders with a weary chuckle. “ _Christ_ , this is so far past whatever you thought you signed up for.”

“Alexander, you know damn well that the number one lesson we try to instill in up-and-coming officers is to always look out for the men and women under their command.”

“I’m not your soldier, George,” Hamilton points out wryly. And, “You sure I’m the only one with authority separation issues?”

“Maybe not,” he allows, and Hamilton looks surprised at the ready admission. 

x---x

Lafayette graciously declines Washington’s offer to pick him up from the airport Saturday night.

He graciously accepts Washington’s offer to pick him up from his hotel on Sunday morning and help him navigate the pass office so he can have access to the base. A much more stringent process here than at Sill or anywhere else Hamilton may have been stationed, requiring verification of the patient name and their admittance status from the department in question.

They sit and attempt small talk while they wait for the staff to make their checks and run Lafayette’s passport. No small feat for two men who have met precisely once before and have naught in common, save a certain attachment to the patient they’re there to see.

“Alexander mentioned you’re engaged.”

Okay, maybe not the most innocuous of opening volleys, considering their respective histories with said patient.

But Lafayette just smiles, wide and sincere. “Indeed.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you, George.” He’s taken more readily to Washington’s offer, that he needn’t call him by his rank, than Washington has to the offer of a couple variants of nickname that Lafayette’s friends use. “And… thank you for…”

“Of course. It’s good you remembered I was nearby.” And somewhat curiously: “It’s good Alexander mentioned it.”

He chuckles softly under his breath. “I visited him shortly before he left overseas. Asked if you were still around.” Washington just shoots him an exasperated glance. “He liked you. Liked working for you. Perhaps didn’t know what to make of you, in the end, but. He said you cared about your, ah… your sergeants, oui? And that you were compassionate with the students. The rigueur of training.”

“High praise indeed.”

There’s so much he wants to ask.

He doesn’t.

“If Alexander is discharged tomorrow. They will accommodate him here for the remainder of the two weeks, or…?”

“There’s a hotel on post for people on travel orders.”

“Ah.” Lafayette hesitates and taps his foot impatiently for a minute and then asks haltingly, “And do you think…?”

“I couldn’t responsibly speculate one way or the other.”

“Of course.”

So he doesn’t.

And he doesn’t ask.

He wonders, and he waits, until someone at the window calls out for, “Gil-bert La-feet,” and gives him his pass and sends them on their way.

x---x

Washington hangs back when Hamilton moves to greet his friend. Watches him melt into Lafayette’s arms and contemplates offering a cursory greeting and then yielding the visit to their reunion, spending his time roaming the hospital complex and drinking the weak cafeteria coffee.

They kiss; fleeting, a warmth to it that is something more than platonic but it’s brief, restrained, and followed up by a lingering press of Lafayette’s lips to Hamilton’s forehead. “Mon cher.”

Hamilton pushes him away but there’s no heat in it, in the way he looks practically bashful as he studiously avoids Washington’s gaze and perches on the edge of the table where they’d played their _Scrabble_ game. “So. Tomorrow I’ll be a resident of the luxurious _Navy Gateway Inn and Suites_ and moved to outpatient services.”

“Oh,” Lafayette moves back in and clasps him by the shoulders. “Bon.”

“I can’t leave the hospital,” he waves his left arm about demonstratively, where he’s got the patient id bracelet, “but I can go downstairs for meals today.” He fidgets under Lafayette’s scrutiny and sighs. “Must seem a little anticlimactic after that trip.”

Lafayette musses his hair and squeezes the back of his neck and rebukes, “You know _very well_ that I’ve been making that flight at least twice a year since I was eighteen, chéri, arrȇte.”

Washington clears his throat and asks, if only to remind Hamilton that he’s there, “Will you be returning to Camp Casey next week?”

“Too soon to tell,” he says with a tight smile.

“Fair enough.” He looks to Lafayette and says, “Take your time together; I’m going to explore a little, if you want to give me a call when you’re done?”

Lafayette starts to nod, but Hamilton cuts him off with a hurried, “What? No, we can…” He looks at Washington, something strangely beseeching in his eyes. “Was gonna make you both buy me coffee at the _very_ least.” He smirks and nods at the shelf full of games. “And do you have _any_ idea, the possibilities that open up when we have _three_ players?”

“Alexandre.”

“That also seems unforgivably rude, dragging George out here _again_ and then kicking him out.”

“ _Alexandre_.”

“I don’t wanna talk about it, Laf,” Hamilton snaps.

“And what?” he laughs. “You think if you can manage to have Captain Washington by your side the whole time I am here, I will simply not bring it up?”

Hamilton’s jaw snaps closed. Something prideful and wounded, and impossibly furious rises in his face and he forces through gritted teeth, “George, would you excuse us?”

By the time he locates an unsuspecting tech in the nearby common area and follows her back past the visitor’s lounge to the door, Hamilton and Lafayette are damn near shouting at one another. In French.

x---x

It’s not five minutes later – hell, he doesn’t even think it’s _three_ – when Lafayette is escorted back out of the closed unit. Washington joins him at the desk where he’s retrieving his phone and stares, incredulous. “They kick you out?”

“This,” Lafayette mutters without even once turning to look at his face, “must seem quite a waste of your Sunday, my apologies.”

“Are you… leaving?”

“By the sound of things, I don’t think Alexander will be entertaining any more visitors today.”

He stalks off, and Washington damn near forgets to collect his own things before following.

x---x

“Did you fly all the way across an ocean just to provoke him?”

Weekend traffic is better; the silence still grows oppressive midway back to Arlington.

The curiosity too strong.

Lafayette doesn’t answer right away, but when he does it is with a simple and unapologetic, “Yes.” But then he shifts from where he’s got his elbow propped on the door, eyes glazed and staring unseeingly out the window, and levels a piercing stare at Washington while he drives. “And yet, I had to say nothing at all to accomplish that goal – so what does _that_ tell you?” And then he sighs and deflates and casts his gaze downward. “He cannot go on like this.”

“Does Alexander resent your engagement?”

What he was really asking back in the Visitor’s Center, he supposes.

But Lafayette shakes his head and muses, “No, no. Nothing so… any darkness that lives in his heart, it is pointed inward. Perhaps he _regrets_ it a little, because in the end he does not care for change but – he knew it was coming when I last saw him back in the spring.”

“If he doesn’t care for change,” Washington remarks slowly, eyes fixed on the traffic dancing around them, “perhaps the Army wasn’t the best career choice.”

And Lafayette _laughs_. “But do you not see? Even still, you understand him so little?” He shoots him a sidelong glance and waits for him to elaborate. “ _He_ is chaos, his _mind_ is chaos, _chaos_ is what he understands. There is… _order_ in the madness of this life that you two lead, there is… _reliability_ in it.”

_You’re predictable, George_.

“He strayed once,” Lafayette continues after a minute. “It… he was overseas. The first time.”

Quieter, carefully, a certain reluctance that tells Washington he is betraying a very great confidence, and he considers telling him to stop.

_You have a rough deployment, Lieutenant?_

_Is there such thing as a smooth one?_

He doesn’t.

“He… let that _order_ break down. And he fell in love at a time he should not, with a person he _could not_ and… to be attached to someone he could not properly love, and then to lose them and discover he could not properly _grieve_?”

Washington thinks back to an ill-considered liaison some fifteen months ago, and he has no idea what he’s done.

X---X

**III.** _Ill-structured problems are complex, nonlinear, and dynamic; therefore, they are the most challenging to understand and solve._

The next week passes in a busy haze, alternating between the rush of semester’s end work and preparing for the cadets’ big winter social function, a Dining-In on Saturday night in the Union ballroom, and a restless, brooding sort of preoccupation with the sporadic flow of information from Hamilton.

To Hamilton’s credit, he doesn’t leave him waiting and wondering on Monday; sends him a text that he sees when he leaves his nine o’clock MS-1s class with a picture of his tennis shoe-clad foot extended outward.

_From: CPT Hamilton_

_[img]_

_Look pa – shoelaces!_

And another that pings his phone while Sullivan’s leaning against his desk a half hour later, comparing notes on their 3s finals.

_From: CPT Hamilton_

_[img]_

_Look pa – hoodies!_

Washington snorts at the picture, a selfie which features Hamilton with one end of the sweatshirt’s drawstring caught between his teeth.

Also visible is an arm wrapped around his shoulders; Hamilton’s quiet way of reassuring him that the argument with Lafayette has been forgiven, he suspects.

He hopes, anyway.

_To: CPT Hamilton_

_I appreciate the update, however irreverent._

It takes a few hours to get a response he was not expecting anyway.

_From: CPT Hamilton_

_Laf leaves Sat morn. He’s staying with me here til then._

_From: CPT Hamilton_

_Thanks for the Scrabble, George. Buy you dinner before I go?_

Subtle, but perhaps the most sentimental thing he’s ever seen from Hamilton.

x---x

His MS-1s sit their final on Wednesday; it’s perhaps an even bigger joke than their _basic tenets of Army leadership_ paper submitted the week before, but the first year is really just about adapting to the environment, the routines that will one day be second nature to the ones who stick it out.

He bids them farewell with quiet reminders about the event Saturday night.

It’s a full house back at the office upon his return; Colonel Montgomery leaning against the doorway to his office, lobbing a stress ball around with Sullivan and Wayne. Washington barely manages to snag the thing out of the air when his CO lobs it at his face with a quick, “Look alive, George. Been waiting on you.”

“That sounds ominous, sir.”

He chucks the ball to Sullivan and ducks across the open office to put his computer bag at his desk.

“You’re the one with the good intel,” Wayne drawls from his desk chair that’s been rolled into the middle of the open floor. “Who’s throwing the obligatory Dining-In after-party?”

Washington takes the ball back. “Into whom do we need to put the fear of God, you mean? Hale says Brewster.”

Sullivan snorts. “How appropriate.”

“He seemed to think they were keeping it contained in the upper-class circles.”

“Hm,” Montgomery considers and pockets the ball. “Let’s put some fear of God into him anyway, shall we?”

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he withdraws it with a chuckle. “Of course, sir. I’ll have him pop by after tomorrow’s exam.”

Another text from Hamilton; he stares at this one for several seconds, uncomprehending.

_From: CPT Hamilton_

_Operation Free Willy is a go; Friday, 0830._

Haltingly, he responds:

_To: CPT Hamilton_

_Is that… a sex joke?_

“George?”

“Hm?” he glances at Sullivan.

“Should bring Tallmadge. They’re thick as thieves, but he’ll keep Brewster honest.”

He nods; his phone buzzes again in his hand.

_From: CPT Hamilton_

_omg sir no._

_From: CPT Hamilton_

_The movie. With the whale. My “flipper.”_

_From: CPT Hamilton_

_Goddammit old habits, GEORGE._

_From: CPT Hamilton_

_Laf didn’t get it either, fuck you both._

A soft chuckle escapes him. Montgomery nods at his phone, bemused. “Everything alright?”

“Yes, sir; my pain-in-the-ass BCT XO. Still running circles around me.”

“That your guy at Reed?” He hesitates a moment before nodding; can only imagine the look on Hamilton’s face at being office gossip. “Things going okay?”

“Sounds like, sir.”

Not a lot else he can say; not a lot else he _knows_. Nothing he’d share even if he did.

_To: CPT Hamilton_

_My congratulations. May you put your liberated arm to productive use._

“Shit,” Wayne says as he rolls his chair back over to his desk, where a stack of finals from his MS-2s class is staring at him and waiting to be graded. “Bring him to Dining-In. I want to meet the kid who can run circles around your unflappable ass.”

A faster reply, while Sullivan chortles in the background.

_From: CPT Hamilton_

_Was… was THAT a sex joke?_

He doesn’t dignify that with a response.

“McDougall’s begged off,” Montgomery points out. “We’ve got a seat.”

Washington hums noncommittally, and the room falls back into its usual rhythm. Montgomery retreats to his office, Wayne reluctantly picks up his 2s finals and Washington starts unpacking his bag from his 1s class; doubts it will be more than a half hour’s work to go through them all.

While he grades, he debates with himself about extending the offer. Hamilton despises his so-called _mandatory fun_ , but might enjoy the change of scenery, a chance to shoot the shit with some folks who don’t know him, his background, who don’t even really know what brought him to the area to begin with, and all things considered, none of them would be so tactless as to directly _ask_.

He finishes his stack, rubs at his temples, and pulls his phone back in front of him.

_To: CPT Hamilton_

_In lieu of dinner, if you’re interested Saturday – your ROTC program ever do dining-in?_

It’s barely a minute’s wait.

_From: CPT Hamilton_

_Clueless cadets? “Espirit de corpse”? VIRGIN GROG? Sign me the FUCK up._

x---x

“So,” Washington says as Hamilton climbs into his car outside the metro station early Saturday afternoon. “I can’t promise a perfect fit, but we dug up some artillery braids and a shoulder cord, you’ll be somewhat up to spec.”

He can’t help but notice the way Hamilton reaches over with his left hand for the seatbelt, before remembering and snagging it with the right instead and dragging it across. “Will I be wearing cadet rank?”

Part of him wants to say _yes_ just to see if Hamilton would willingly submit to that indignity.

“No, our artillery man just made major, still had his old boards. And Miss Wright, in charge of our supply room – stay on her good side and she can find just about any Army-issued pin in existence buried somewhere in the mess.” 

Hamilton shoots him a pointed look. “Are you on her good side?”

“I’m on everyone’s good side.”

“What a supremely dull way to move through life.”

It’s been a week, and he can barely count the quickly-interrupted encounter on Sunday before Lafayette was kicked out. He still looks tired, elbow propped on the door, face propped in his hand, half-lidded eyes following their progress as Washington maneuvers them back to the main road towards campus. Hard to say though if that’s not just late nights with his friend, an early morning start to head to the airport.

“Your light’s green,” Hamilton points out with poorly-concealed smile, and then chuckles when Washington swears and makes the turn. “What? What is it, what do you want to know? I’m an open book this week.” Washington just makes an indignant noise of protest. “I’m free. My wrist is healed. I haven’t offed myself, but I’d be lying if I said being pushed to talk about my dead mother in group therapy didn’t make me _kind of_ want to fling myself into the Potomac.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Did you and Lafayette have a good visit, at least?” He doesn’t answer right away. Washington spares him a glance while he drives, and finds a bemused sort of humor flickering across Hamilton’s face. “What? The last I saw the two of you, you were shouting at one another. In another language.”

Hamilton just shakes his head. “We had a lovely time. Did a little sight-seeing. He bullied me into making all of my appointments on time, we very diligently indulged in our usual vices in moderation, and only slept together in the sense that there was only one bed.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Yeah, but you wondered.”

Washington glances away from the knowing challenge in Hamilton’s eyes. Daring him to bring up that final conversation with Lafayette, the confidence he’d betrayed, the curiosity it evoked.

He doesn’t; awkward enough that Hamilton knows that he knows however little he does.

However little he understands Lafayette’s motivations in telling him at all.

x---x

When they get to Washington’s apartment after a quick lunch stop, Hamilton tries on the shoes Washington snagged for him from their supply room, deems the fit acceptable, and doesn’t remark upon the fact that they’ve been recently polished.

And then he curls up on the sofa and falls asleep.

x---x

About two hours later, Washington is in the kitchen unloading the dishwasher when Hamilton stirs and stumbles over to one of the counter stools. “Got any coffee?”

More polite than demanding some, for surely Hamilton can smell the pot he put on ten minutes earlier in the hope that it would rouse him, rather than obliging Washington to do so.

So he pours the mug, and remembers well enough that he takes it black. Slides it over, and once Hamilton has his hands wrapped around it for warmth, as though the December chill permeated the apartment, he grins slyly and adds, “Got any cereal?”

He sighs, opens a cupboard, pulls down a box of granola and slides it across as well. Reaches for a bowl, and by the time he turns back, Hamilton’s got a hand digging in the box.

“Get your grubby paw out of my food.”

He withdraws his fistful, shoves most of it in his mouth, sends a considerable portion spilling onto the counter, and then dumps some into the bowl and continues eating it dry.

x---x

At quarter after four, Hamilton grabs the garment bag hanging on the coat hook by the door. “I guess I’ll go, uh…”

Washington watches him head towards the bedroom; considers, and before he can stop himself –

“Alexander?” He turns; Washington approaches slowly and reaches out – touches careful fingertips to his jaw and feels the day’s stubble. Hamilton just watches him, lips parted around a forgotten question. “Under the sink; there’s some extra razors.”

His throat bobs as he swallows. “Alright.”

Washington’s already dressed by the time Hamilton resurfaces in his blues pants and an undershirt, the white dress shirt hooked in two fingertips with one hand while the other pulls at the waist of the pants to demonstrate the gap.

“Well, the length is good at least.”

“Yeah,” Hamilton snarks. “And at least ROTC doesn’t fuck around with dress mess and the goddamn suspenders.”

“You look fine; you’ll look more put together than ninety-nine percent of the cadets, I promise.” Glances over his shave and flicks a thumb over his ear to clear away an errant bit of shaving cream.

Hamilton doesn’t move. Watches him, his face, and then looks up and down Washington’s blues and tells him, “You have old man shaving cream.”

“And you’re a brat. Here,” he beckons, and takes the shirt from where Hamilton threatens to rumple the collar in his grasp. “Turn.”

He guides Hamilton’s left hand into the sleeve. Pauses a moment and traces his fingers across the prominent bones of his right wrist before doing the same and pulling the shirt up his arms and settling it over his shoulders.

When he prompts him back around, his eyes are closed; a forced evenness to his breathing. Washington presses a light touch to his face again, smooth now, and feels something in him crack at the way he leans ever-so-slightly into the pressure of the touch. “I’ve got you, Alexander.”

A ragged gasp breaks up his careful breaths but he holds himself so very still as Washington works his way down the row of buttons. As he takes his hands, one by one, and turns them over to fix his cuffs.

“Tuck your shirt,” he instructs quietly. “I’ll go find your tie and belt.”

And if he takes an extra moment in the bathroom to wipe his hands over his face and stare helplessly at his own reflection in the mirror, well – Hamilton hardly needs know.

When he returns, Hamilton threads his own belt with nimble fingers, but then resumes his carefully obedient posture, his silence, while Washington turns up his collar, while he eyes the ends of the tie and adjusts accordingly.

Even while he messes up tying it the first time, unaccustomed to doing it backwards like this, on somebody else.

“Do you want to put on the jacket here and check the pins?”

Hamilton stares at him for a long minute before shaking his head _no_. “I trust you.”

And he turns away and shatters the moment, padding back out to the living room in his stocking feet to find his shoes.

x---x

He watches Hamilton charm the cadre while they survey the ballroom setup. While Sullivan and Tallmadge fight with the laptop they’re trying to connect to the projector for the slideshow.

He listens to Hamilton accept good-natured abuse about his Ivy League education, and dole some right back out to Wayne’s “coddled academy ass.”

He sees a tinge of pink rise in Miss Wright’s cheeks as Hamilton thanks her for helping outfit him on such short notice.

He hears Hamilton introduce himself to a couple of the more forward older cadets, curious about the strange officer in their midst and thwarted by his lack of nameplate, the only piece of the barebones blues Miss Wright couldn’t make happen on forty-eight hours’ notice.

When Hamilton does introduce himself, it’s a clearly scripted, “Friend and former colleague of Captain Washington’s, passing through on leave,” that is at once descriptive and bland, and invites little by way of follow-up.

He listens and he observes, watches this amiable creature settle himself into the midst of strangers without missing a beat, watches him command each and every audience he stumbles upon, and is reminded with distressing vividness of the first weeks Hamilton spent under his command.

x---x

“I like your CO,” Hamilton muses absently as he kicks off his shoes three hours later. “He gave me a challenge coin.”

“Did he really?”

Hamilton flashes it with a wry smile, and then places it onto the kitchen counter with his phone, his wallet. “Think he felt bad about my shot of grog.” He shrugs off his jacket and tosses it over a stool; loosens his tie and undoes the collar of his shirt.

Washington lowers himself slowly down on the sofa and watches him move about the room. Casual. Curious. More with it than upon their earlier arrival.

“I forgot how brutal a night of Army pedantry can be without a steady flow from a well-stocked bar.”

“Think there’re a few beers in the fridge.”

He takes him up on the offer. Crouches down and out of sight, and then stands and rummages through a couple of drawers completely shamelessly until Washington hears the quick _hiss_ and pop of a cap coming off, and then another.

Hamilton walks the second over to him; extended, brows raised, an offer that Washington can only interpret as _I’ll drink it if you don’t_.

He takes it; takes a quick sip, eyes never leaving Hamilton’s as he stands there and takes a deeper pull of his own.

A hundred thoughts flit across his mind in the span of a few slow heartbeats. A hundred questions and confessions.

Hamilton preempts them all. Murmurs slowly, curiously, “What would you say if I…?” and then climbs into Washington’s lap, straddles him and rests his weight on his thighs and takes another long pull of his drink.

Washington watches Hamilton watch him. Feels at once uncertain and resolved, and somehow strangely exposed by the curious gleam in his eyes. Has spent the past ten days, damn near the past two _years_ trying to figure out the mystery that is Alexander Hamilton and is decidedly discomfited at having the tables turned.

He leans over and puts his drink on the end table; then rests his hands at the tops of Hamilton’s thighs and squeezes gently and says, “If I’m so predictable, what do _you_ think?”

Hamilton bites his lip on a reflexive smile that makes his eyes crinkle. Some of the tension seeps from his body, his posture, and he leans in and takes Washington’s mouth in a slow kiss that tastes like bitter beer and saliva and something indescribably _Hamilton_ that pulls at some vague place deep inside him.

And then he’s swinging one leg over and twisting around; scoots himself back until he’s propped against the arm of the couch, feet resting lazily in Washington’s lap. Beer bottle impressively balanced through the whole maneuver, and he swallows one more sizable mouthful before reaching over his head and feeling carefully for the other end table to set it down.

“I think you’re a good man, George.”

_So are you_ , he wants to say.

He doesn’t.

“And I think… you want things that maybe you don’t entirely understand.”

Washington fixes him with an unimpressed stare and gets a firm grip around one of the errant feet in his lap, squeezes sharply. “I understand just fine, don’t be a shit.”

Hamilton searches his face for a careful moment before offering a quiet, “I’m sorry.” Washington just waves it off. “Also,” he wriggles his toes and flexes his feet, “ _Christ_ , do that again.”

“I’m not massaging your feet, Alexander.” But he does poke at them until Hamilton squeaks his ticklish indignation and removes them from his lap entirely.

x---x

Despite their plans of stopping for breakfast on the way back to Bethesda, it somehow surprises Washington not at all when he leaves his bedroom and finds the couch empty, and a note pinned under an empty bottle on the kitchen counter.

_Woke early and got restless. Called a cab to the metro._

_Thank you, George._

He goes back to the bedroom and retrieves his phone.

_To: CPT Hamilton_

_You’re welcome, Alexander_

He’s eating a bowl of granola when he gets a response twenty-five minutes later.

_From: CPT Hamilton_

_Home sweet TDY accommodations._

And that is that.

Except.

**IV.** _Commanders realize that uncertainty and time preclude achieving perfect understanding before deciding and acting._

The last class final is Monday morning, Wayne’s section of 4s. When he returns to their offices, he finds the lot of them engaged in the ever-grueling task of end-of-semester inventories, swears colorfully, deposits his class materials on his desk and then trots dutifully to Miss Wright’s desk in the supply room to find out where he can get started.

Having already returned and accounted for all of Hamilton’s borrowed gear, Washington starts in on the stacks dropped off by a couple of 1s dropping out, and one of Wayne’s 2s who’s transferring out of state.

He’s sorting pins and Velcro tapes into hardware storage drawers when his phone rings in his pocket. He fishes it out, raises a curious brow at his caller, swipes the screen, and tucks it against his shoulder so he can keep sorting. “Hello, Alexander – get your flight scheduled?”

There’s loud rustling on the line, like he’s standing outside in the wind, but no immediate response. Washington frowns down at the stack of battalion patches in his hand and asks, “Alexander?”

“ _I…I’m sorry, sir, I keep…”_

Across a bad connection, he can still tell Hamilton sounds off; even so, it’s the _sir_ that sends a chill down his spine and has him dropping the rest of the patches on top of the bin and turning for the open door to the office, his desk.

“Alexander, where are you? You sound like you’re outside.”

“ _I… yeah._ ”

He pockets his wallet, his keys. “Are you at the hospital?”

There’s a long pause, but at least he can hear unsteady breaths through this one. “ _I thought I could…_ _will you come get me?_ ”

“I will come get you,” he says slowly. Patiently as he can manage. “But I need to know where you are.”

Montgomery comes wandering over, concern creasing his brow. Washington holds up a hand to forestall any questions that might distract him from Hamilton’s words.

Finally, he just gets: “ _Arlington_.”

“Arlington’s a big place, Alexander, help me out.”

“ _Um… the east side. The wall._ ”

“The east side wall…?”

Montgomery lets out a harsh breath and leans over to tap on the keyboard of Washington’s computer. Wiggles the mouse until the screen comes to life, and then pulls up a browser and runs a search for _arlington cemetery map._

And Washington realizes he misunderstood entirely what Lafayette was trying to tell him.

x---x

Arlington is covered in wreaths. Propped under each grave marker, and at the bottom of each column of plaques on the Niche Wall.

Washington walks along and wonders how many wreaths they managed to spread across the cemetery this year. Notes the occasional extra cone of flowers under particular columns, a couple of bouquets that have been left on the top of the wall against regulation. Keeps his hands tucked in his jacket and his face bowed against the chilly breeze, and spares the occasional glance at his phone to see if Hamilton’s provided any updates.

He hasn’t; he doesn’t. But the Niche Wall runs only about a half mile along the property’s eastern edge, and Washington doesn’t think he’s made it halfway down before he spots Hamilton sitting on a stone bench opposite a column more decorated than most.

It doesn’t take him long to decide which of the three markers likely merited the especial attention. The only name that’s familiar; the only one with the _Medal of Honor_ star and eagle adorning the plaque.

_JOHN_

**_LAURENS_ **

_CPT USA_

_1988 2015_

_BELOVED_

_SON & BROTHER_

_HUSBAND & FATHER_

Washington turns and slowly makes his way over to Hamilton, lowers himself down by his side on the bench.

Underdressed, hands tucked in the pocket of his hoodie, shoulders drawn up to his ears, Hamilton nods over to the wall and mutters with something like incredulity in his voice, practically disparagement, “He won a goddamn _Medal of Honor_ and then died in a fucking training accident back home.”

“I remember.”

Hamilton huffs and shakes his head. “Of course you do. Everyone does.” And softer, almost inaudible against the wind: “South Carolina’s favorite son.”

“Alexander…”

“D’you think General Laurens knew how much his son chafed under the pressure of the family legacy?”

He doesn’t answer; it’s a rhetorical question anyway.

“Imagine what he’d say if he knew John spent his last deployment defusing that pressure by cheating on his pregnant wife with a starry-eyed, hero-worshipping lieutenant straight out of BOLC.”

Washington understands everything, and nothing, all at once.

But he’s confident that any benefit to be gleaned from this detour has long been reached.

“C’mon.” He wraps a firm hand under Hamilton’s elbow and waits for him to drag his red-eyed, glassy gaze up and over to look at him and orders, “It’s time to go.”

x---x

He runs the heat full-blast in the car. Stays in the parking lot and waits for Hamilton to stop shivering.

And then simply waits him out.

Eventually, he sniffs and wipes at his nose with his sleeve and thumps his head back against the seat and turns a reluctant stare on Washington. “I have to ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

“They want to put me on convalescent leave and keep me here for a month.” Washington nods slowly. “Do some PT for the wrist; get my head on straight. And I need… a person.”

When he doesn’t elaborate, Washington echoes, “A person.”

“It’s an outpatient transition program. Usually enrollees have a caregiver person on-site, but since they already discharged me, they’ll waive that. But I still need… an emergency person, an… accountability person.” And then he hastens to add, “And, you know, you wouldn’t actually have to _do_ anything? If you… trust me to, you know, be where I need to be when I need to be there.”

And then he goes pink and turns away and mutters, “Sorry. I’m sorry, I know it’s still… a lot to ask.”

It’s not, is the thing, but…

_Predictability is reliability and –_

“Do you trust me with that?”

Amusement sparks Hamilton’s eyes. Something reluctantly fond and exasperated all at once, and he bites his lip on a smile and counters, “Do you trust your _self_?”

He doesn’t say anything; doesn’t know what _to_ say.

After a minute, Hamilton shakes his head and says, “You’re a good man, George.”

_So are you_ , he wants to say.

He does.

Hamilton looks down and smiles faintly at his lap. “Well, alright then.” He nods out the windshield, at the mostly empty parking lot around them on this cold, winter day.

“Let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> You may thank (or blame) all of the kind people whose enthusiasm for the first fic and queries about a continuation led (eventually) to this one.  
> And all the thanks to _dreamlittleyo_ for listening to me agonize and whine about the most mundane of details about this one before finally being satisfied enough to post the damn thing. XD


End file.
